A Dukedom Declined
Even at his breakneck pace of conquest, Johan spared no pains in winning over the hearts of the people along his path. Opening his own coffers to relieve suffering in lands that were not even his own was a virtue one almost never saw.
Almsgiving and donation were duties every noble was expected to honor, yet few practiced them in good faith. For the most part such charity was pure performance—dazzling on the surface, hollow underneath.
Which was why his vassals found Johan's conduct so bewildering.
— "Must be his deep faith."
— "The Church threw its support behind him, so he could hardly snub it."
— "His Excellency owes those priest bastards nothing. Isn't he being far too generous?"
The Church, for its part, never tired of crying share and give alms, stop wringing your serfs dry, quit holding those barbaric trial by combat—and nobles, as ever, let it flow in one ear and out the other. A lord who actually listened, the way Johan did, was a rare breed indeed.
But Johan's generosity had nothing to do with the Church. Not that he minded the priests bursting into giddy hymns of praise every time he doled out charity...
He had given, first and foremost, to tighten his grip on the region.
Frankly speaking, nobles grossly underestimated their serfs. They might protest, "We tax them so lightly and give back so much more—where's the contempt in that?" But this was never a question of degree; it was a question of mindset. They saw the peasants as trifling creatures—things that paid taxes when the season came, rendered their labor dues, and yielded extra coin whenever squeezed. Regarded as beings wholly other, those creatures were doomed to remain invisible in their lords' thinking.
The proof of it lay right over there: the Margrave. That miserable end he had met, after strutting through life as though everything were owed to him.
"See to the bodies. Give them proper burials."
With those words, Johan's gaze swept across the knights. Not one of them could hold it; every head lowered. They had cut the Margrave down where he stood instead of taking him alive, so avoiding his eyes was only natural. Every man here was now an accomplice.
"The Margrave's knights resisted fiercely, I hear. It couldn't be helped, then."
"Th-that's right, Your Excellency."
"They ignored the summons to surrender and came at us."
Johan nodded. Only when their lord consented to look the other way did the vassals finally breathe easy. But in the eyes of those standing behind him, a quiet contempt had already taken root.
My thanks for playing your parts exactly as intended.
Johan would rather not have killed the Margrave with his own hands. There was nothing to gain from wetting them personally. The ideal arrangement was for the vassals beneath him to step forward unbidden—precisely as these men had—and so he could only be grateful that the Margrave's vassals had obliged so beautifully. Suspicion and scorn would land on their shoulders, of course, but Johan fully intended to make good on every ounce of it.
That was how a vassal's loyalty was forged.
"So it's true, then? The Margrave is really dead? It might yet be idle rumor."
"We have confirmed it already. His own vassals ran him through with a spear to finish the job."
The Republic's envoys moved fast. Sailing upriver from the western port and then riding hard on horseback, they found themselves at the Margraviate in no time at all.
The countryside lay so calm that the earlier reports of pirates running rampant nearby might have been lies—which made it suddenly, viscerally real that those pirates had been smashed to pieces. In the far distance they spied a column moving under its banners: the fighting was over, and vassals were streaming home to their own lands.
What caught the eye was what trailed behind them—wagons, and slaves in long strings beside them. The spoils of the campaign, unmistakably.
"Good heavens. Just how much did those pirate devils rake in?"
The envoys clicked their tongues. That haul alone looked likely to more than cover the vassals' losses. The captured pirates would be sold into slavery or parceled out to the villages. And if this was merely what had been handed down to the vassals, then Johan, the supreme commander, must have carried off tens of times as much.
Without quite meaning to, the envoy clicked his tongue again.
"Hush. Mind your manner."
"I know it."
The vassal of the port town where the Republic's fleet lay at anchor had already bent the knee beneath Johan's sword, and the ground they crossed now belonged to yet another vassal in his service.
"You've come from the Republic?"
Having recognized the flag, mercenaries out on patrol came trotting up. Even with the vassals peeling off home one by one, Johan's own men had stayed behind—well armed, well fed, faces glowing with health. Men living in plenty, clearly.
The envoys found themselves tugging their cloaks tighter. Southern winters were never cruel so long as it stayed dry. It was dry now, and still a chill crept through them. The weight of their own sins, no doubt.
"That's right. Conduct us to His Excellency."
"Yes, my lord. Follow me."
Fortunately the mercenaries were all courtesy, and it settled the envoys' nerves a little. Johan's main force was encamped not at the Margrave's castle huddled against the mountains but out on the plain below. He could have taken the keep; instead he kept to the camp with his soldiers.
"And that, there? What is it?"
"The slaves we took this campaign."
"Is he raising them as slave soldiers?"
The Republican envoys stared in frank puzzlement. Several hundred young slaves, at the least, were running back and forth across the field, sweating through their drills.
"Training a pack of heathens—whatever for?"
"His Excellency has converted them."
What an eccentric he is.
The envoys could make nothing of it. Heathen slaves were to be sold off, or set to hauling and scrubbing—no one drilled them from scratch. What if they rose in revolt? True, the Eastern Empire kept a custom of training slaves into soldiers, but to men of the Republic it was simply laughable. Handing swords to slaves because you had run short of men willing to die for you.
"I believe a dukedom premature."
"But Your Excellency—"
"The Lord has no love for the arrogant. It is not a title I should dare to covet."
Johan's answer was clean and final. The Church's envoy wore a look of genuine, unfeigned regret.
The Church was much the same as the Republic: neither had dreamed Johan would rampage quite so magnificently. Still, the Church trusted him. However hard they tried to doubt, every report flying in from the field was wallpapered edge to edge in his praise—there was nothing to be done. And besides, the Imperial faction that had pressed upon the Church from the south for so long had evaporated overnight. That, too, was an achievement beyond argument.
So the Church had chosen a different approach than the Republic: pour yet more power into Johan outright and forge him into a proper shield. The result was this offer of a new dukedom to rule the south—a rank befitting the hegemon of these lands, an honor in truth most illustrious.
In a word: go fight the neighbors some more.
With a dukedom in hand, the name itself would serve as pretext for endless campaigning—the Imperial lands boxed in to the south, the heathen islands boiling with pirates, or perhaps the peninsula to the east. Tempting, truly. But Johan restrained himself. Stripping the Margrave's county was more than enough for now; there was no reason to clutch at the honor of a duke.
No need to be watched any closer than I already am.
Already he could feel the wariness closing in from every quarter. Why thicken it for the sake of one more title?
But too much humility becomes its own problem at times like this!
So thought the Church's envoy, bowing himself out. Any other young knight would have been drunk on honor and begging for more; Johan instead chose this of all moments to render glory unto God. A beautiful sight—and a regrettable one. Set beside the other title-hungry nobles of the realm, his qualifications were beyond dispute.
"Turning down a good offer wearies a man in its own way."
"Well, the noble lords have all gone home by now, haven't they?"
"They have. For that much, I'm thankful."
Aclada laughed around a mouthful of wild grass. His hands and neck glittered with ornaments of every description—and not his alone. Euclia and the rest of the centaurs were every bit as festooned.
Crows, the whole lot of them...
The tribes of the east preferred to wear their wealth, carrying it about as gold and treasure strung on their own bodies. Those who had skimmed rich rewards from the pirate hunt now went draped in loot from head to hoof. To Johan's eye it was anything but elegant; to the eastern tribes it was apparently the very picture of dash. The way they hailed one another's splendor left him dumbfounded.
"Oh, that reminds me, Count. Euclia's been grumbling—wants to know why you'd bother raising such worthless trash."
!
Euclia, incandescent at the tattling, whipped a forehoof toward Aclada's skull. Johan raised a hand for calm.
"You mean the slave soldiers?"
The mountain of captured pirates had posed Johan a genuine dilemma. Selling them off or doling them out to the vassals was the clean solution, naturally—but with a little surplus had come a little greed. Properly trained soldiers were dear creatures. Even the cheapest mercenaries devoured silver by the day, and mustering serfs was not worth a moment's thought. But a household guard that answered to him alone?
For that, conditions were required: they had to be young, with no other ties here, no patron to run crying to...
The more he turned it over, the better it looked. So Johan had picked out the younger pirates and offered them conversion. No one was fool enough to refuse a pardon. Several hundred were chosen in that fashion.
"Of course, measured against a warrior the likes of Euclia, they are weak beyond all saving."
Euclia glowed at the praise, grinning ear to ear. Aclada clicked his tongue.
"But keep drilling them as we have been, and in time they might close half the distance to you. Would you not say?"
"M-my thinking was... short. I-I will go and train them myself. To repay."
"Dear me. If Euclia herself takes the drill field, my mind is greatly eased."
Euclia trotted out, and Aclada snorted after her.
"Ain't she a fool?"
"You'll go help her. No hunting. That is an order."
...
Aclada wore the face of a man ambushed in his sleep. Who knew Euclia's foolishness would come back around and put an arrow in his hide as well...?
"My lord. I have counsel to offer concerning the training of the slaves."
This time it was Izelia who came to speak, and Johan regarded her with mild surprise.
"Is it the teaching of slaves that displeases you? It is little more than a whim of mine—I'd not have you take such offense."
"Nay. I have watched them, and their training must be raised a level. Grant me leave, and I will take the field and instruct them myself."
"...No. That's quite all right."
...
Johan had genuinely racked his brains over that curriculum. Had he imposed training befitting an elven knight from the first day, half of them would have collapsed and never risen again. But Izelia, rare for her, fell into a sulk—and Johan found himself coaxing her all over again.
"Your Excellency, Count Yeats. To be received by you thus is a true honor."
With ceremony several times more laborious than at their last meeting, the envoys offered their greetings. Johan returned a nod.
"The Republic's services in this affair were great indeed. You have my gratitude."
"Our services are but trifles beside the feats Your Excellency has wrought."
"So it is."
?
Having agreed and then offered nothing further, Johan left the envoys stranded. Were they not owed the usual riposte—no, no, your contributions were this and that—and the compliments stacked another story higher? But Johan simply waited, and faced with that sudden quiet, the envoys felt their nerves tighten for no reason they could name.
...
The silence held. It grew so awkward that no one could have said where it had begun. Deciding the moment had ripened, Johan opened his mouth.
"I have heard the Viscount sent envoys to goad someone into attacking me."
...?
?!
The envoys nearly leapt out of their skins. That the visit of the Viscount's men had come to light—well, that was plausible enough. Envoys passing to and fro bred rumor however deep the discretion. But that had never been the errand. Where on earth had such a tale sprouted?
"Not so, Your Excellency!"
"Which part is not so? That no envoys came? Or that envoys came, made a proposal, and it was not the proposal I describe?"
"...The Viscount's envoys did come. But they made no such proposal—never—and we accepted no proposal of the Viscount's!"
"Then why was I not told at once?"
"It was a proposal of sheer fantasy, and we took it for an attempt to sow discord between ourselves and Your Excellency, and so judged it beneath reporting—"
"Spare me the nonsense. The Church's priests have already reported it to me. The knights of the Order seized the Viscount's envoys and put them to the question."
...?!
Fire leapt in the envoys' eyes as the shape of things dawned. They had fancied themselves masters of this game—only to be struck, cleanly, by the Church. Sour as relations between the Republic and the Church might be, to move so nakedly, and so soon! It was plainly a scheme to drive a wedge between the Republic and Johan.